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September 24.
Old people and children lack that kind of modesty which leads us to hide the secret parts of ourselves with such care. This is a benefit of divine foresight. Their infirmities would make harmful in them those often invincible aversions to letting others see what may shock.
October 8.
Fathers love their children because they are theirs. The more, then, a child is his father’s property under the laws, the more he will be loved by him. For the happiness of the children themselves, paternal authority must be given a great extent, a great support.
Yet a child must not be his father’s thing, as Diderot understood it, but his person; in a word, he must belong to him as much as a human being can belong to a man.
October 9.
Ell (abulnà), an armful.—Measures ought to be taken from the dimensions of the human body: the foot, measurement by the ell, the armful.
October 14.
— It is a burning piece of ice.
October 17.
A bile without phlegm prevailed in all temperaments...
Marat had the face of a vampire.
To scorn life and death.
Richer Sarazin. His mind resembles those fabrics that have no juice of their own but draw in and pump up the juices of all things, soak themselves in them, and wet everything they come near. His writings are adulterated beauty.
October 20.
Of the number seven. The phrases of the moon, which complete themselves and vary every seven days, have made seven the number most quickly observed and most universally used in the divisions of time among most peoples of the earth. They seem to say of this number: The stars taught it to us. It is an almost divine number.
November 18.
To submit one’s mind to established opinions and one’s actions to the laws. (Advantages of the ages in which one sees men...)
Perfect probity consists in conforming one’s life first to civil laws, second to the laws of honor, and third to the laws of the just and the unjust, of which delicate souls have so true a sense in the depths of their conscience.
November 19.
Between such minds there is the difference between a jewel case and a lapidary.
November 21.
Models.—There are no more models.